MARK LAWSON:
Rosie Boycott, it's been accused in
some newspapers of glamorising traitors, does it?

ROSIE BOYCOTT:
It certainly glamorising them at the
beginning, yes. You have to remember it
was a glamorous life they were leading.
They were there in Cambridge, they were
young, they were privileged and I mean if I
have a fault with the first part of the
programme, I think it's the sense that he
doesn't get across actually there was a lot
of agitation at that time. You had one and
a half million people unemployed and in
those universities, there was a lot of feeling
that socialism and Communism was the
way forward for a lot of people. These four
took it further than anybody else. They
were glamorous and they did lead a
glamorous and exciting life. Towards the
end of it, I think the glamour stays a little
bit too precise. And too strong and that you
should have seen much more of their own
critical facility once they discovered what
Stalin's regime was all about. It had lots of
good points. It made for very good
television. As for historical accuracy there
are a heck of a lot of mistakes.

MARK LAWSON:
Will Self, the writer has made them pro-
Jewish, they defend the honour of a Jewish
student, he has made them pro-worker and
they start a strike in the university. He has
admitted he invented those scenes, does
that matter that he said he invented those
scenes?

WILL SELF:
I think the historical inaccuracy is
unforgivable. These are recent events. The
real story is exciting and incredibly
revealing of the nature of the British
establishment at the time and on an
enduring level. The historical liberties that
have been taken, kick off from the start.
MacLean and Anthony Blunt hardly every
met. They are in a slackers' paradise where
they drink and conduct affairs and many of
them open homosexuals. This wouldn't
have happened. MacLean, the political ring
master, the man that was passing incredible
information directly to Stalin, was sitting
in on meetings with Roosevelt but was
made out to be a fairly lowly attaché at the
Embassy. None of it really adds up. Why
do it this way? I couldn't understand this.

MARK LAWSON:
It started as a heterosexual story which it
wasn't primarily. I wonder if they were
nervous about the American market there?

MARK KERMODE:
I don't know. I was impressed in the way it
dealt with them all even-handedly. For me,
I thought they made the concessions
because they worked. I saw all four
episodes back-to-back. I started at ten
o'clock and I couldn't turn it off. I thought
it was gripping and the characters were
beautifully drawn and the sets were
exciting. It was very cinematic and as a
dramatic production, it was really
engrossing.

MARK LAWSON:
Mark, it is dramatic, but does it not matter
if you make up scenes that never happen,
particularly if they appear to change the
motivation, the ideology of the characters?

MARK KERMODE:
No, firstly it's a drama, and it says at the
beginning of every episode, certain
characters and scenes are invented. So we
understand that. We understand how TV
movies of the week work. I grew up
being told that these people were nothing
more than a joke, public school twits that
were playing with Communism. To watch
a drama that takes that idealism seriously
was enlivening. I thought it dealt seriously
with the problem of the Hitler style impact.

ROSIE BOYCOTT:
For one second it dealt with that. You
never saw at any point the consequences of
lives that were lost because of the secrets
they betrayed. One of the most important
spies in it, who infiltrated Bletchley and
gave probably the biggest piece of
information which was about the tanks that
the Germans had and was able to give that
to the Russians and let them win the Kursk
battle which turned the war at that point.
Things like that would have been easy to
introduce to give it a hard historical
edge, it was glossed over, to see Melinda
looking lovely and a bit of a love story.

WILL SELF:
The pre-text that was given for them
getting away with it that Anthony Blunt
was responsible for bringing back the
compromising letters from Edward VIII to
Hitler. That was absolute nonsense.
Anyone who has written on the subject
says that was a conspiracy theory that
people love to fall for and it wouldn't play
out or make any sense. The real story was
the embarrassment of the British
establishment. They were that much
plonkers.